Vigilante

More about Vigilante

Margrave found the building by following the hum. It was faint, like electricity inside bone, and it drew him through the fog-choked streets to an old foundry half-swallowed by weeds. Inside, the air was cool and strangely clean.

At the center of the vast floor rose a mound of fused black stone, its surface alive with openings that glowed from within. Each hollow burned with an amber flame—steady, silent, and somehow alive. The light pulsed faintly, as if it breathed. Above the mound, a thread of pale fire coiled upward, shaping itself into a shifting symbol he could almost recognize, though it slipped from his mind each time he tried to name it.

Then he heard movement.

A figure detached itself from the shadows—tall, dark, fluid, its body glistening like oil under moonlight. Its eyes burned with the same amber hue as the flames. It was neither human nor entirely alien, but something older, patient, and grave.

Margrave could not speak. The creature turned toward the mound, and at its presence the flames brightened, their rhythm deepening like a heartbeat. A voice filled his skull—not heard, but known.
We keep the balance. The forgotten must be tended, or they return hungry.

Within the glow he saw faces—men and women he recognized from the city’s missing posters, their outlines flickering softly like candle smoke. The mound was their resting place, their vigil. The creature was not a monster but a custodian, drawing the city’s lost souls from darkness and holding them here, alight but never gone.

Margrave dropped to his knees. The being regarded him one final time before the lights dimmed, the flames guttered, and it dissolved back into the shadow that had birthed it.

When dawn broke, the foundry was empty. Only a single candle remained at the center of the floor, unburned yet warm to the touch.

Margrave keeps it still, hidden from view. And some nights, when the wind carries the scent of ash and rain, he feels it pulse faintly in his coat pocket—
as if something ancient still breathes through it,
keeping watch in the dark.